<h1>Formatting text</h1>

<p>When writing text in Moodle there are several formats you can choose
   to produce your text, depending on your expertise and the type of browser
   you are using.</p>

<p><b>Usually you can just leave this setting to the default value and things 
      should work as you expect</b>.</p>

<h2>1. Moodle auto-format</h2>

<div class="indent">
<p>This format is best for when you are using normal web forms for entry
   (instead of the Richtext HTML editor).  Just type text normally, as if you
   were sending an email.</p>

<p>When you save your text, Moodle will do a number of things to automatically
   format your text for you. </p> 
<p>For example, URLs such as </p>
   <a href="http://yahoo.com/">http://yahoo.com</a> or even 
   <a href="http://www.yahoo.com/">www.yahoo.com</a> will be turned into links.
<p>Your line breaks will be retained, and blank lines will start new paragraphs.</p>
<p>Smiley characters such as :-) will automatically become their graphical equivalents.</p>
<p>You can even embed HTML code if you want to and it will be retained.</p>
<p class="moreinfo"><a href="help.php?file=text.html">More info about Moodle auto-formatting</a></p>
</div>


<h2>2. HTML format</h2>

<div class="indent">
<p>This format assumes the text is pure HTML.  If you are using the 
   HTML editor to edit text then this is the default format - all 
   the commands in the toolbar are producing HTML for you.</p>

<p>Even if you are not using the Richtext HTML editor, you can use HTML code 
   in your text and it should come out exactly as you intended.</p>

<p>Unlike the Moodle auto-format, no automatic formatting is performed.</p>
<p class="moreinfo"><a href="help.php?file=html.html">More info about HTML in Moodle</a></p>
<p class="moreinfo"><a href="help.php?file=richtext.html">More info about the Richtext HTML editor</a></p>
</div>


<h2>3. Plain text format</h2>

<div class="indent">
<p>This format is useful when you need to include lots of code 
   or HTML that you want to be displayed exactly as you wrote it.</p>

<p>It still translates spaces and new lines, but otherwise your 
   text isn't touched.</p>
</div>


<h2>4. Markdown text format</h2>

<div class="indent">
<p>Markdown format tries to make it easy as possible to type 
   well-formatted XHTML pages using nothing but text written
   more or less like you would write an email.</p>

<p>It's very good for writing clean text pages with some headings
   and some lists but without many links or images.</p>

<p class="moreinfo"><a href="help.php?file=markdown.html">More info about the Markdown format</a></p>
</div>
